Officials with the L.A. County Medical Examiner have identified the 14-year-old motorcyclist who died in a head-on collision at the intersection Oak Ridge Drive and Railroad Avenue on Jan. 5.
Shayne Thompson of Canyon Country was identified by medical examiner officials as the motorcyclist who was transported to Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. On Jan. 4, after riding a dirt bike motorcycle northbound in the southbound lanes on Railroad Avenue when he collided head-to-head with an oncoming van, according to Deputy Robert Jensen, spokesman for the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station.
Thompson was knocked off the dirt bike and then struck by another vehicle and trapped under it. Sheriff’s deputies were the first to reach the scene and rescued the victim from under the vehicle prior to L.A. County Fire Department arrival and treatment, Jensen said.
Jensen added that Fire Department personnel treated Thompson at the scene before they transported him to the hospital, where he was listed in critical condition. He was pronounced dead at the hospital on the morning of Jan. 5.
The official cause of death was listed as blunt force trauma and ruled as an accident, according to the medical examiner report.
At the time of the incident, Jensen said that sheriff’s officials had been made aware of a video circulating on social media depicting three juveniles riding dirt bikes in the food court of the Valencia Town Center mall, but could not confirm that Thompson was one of the riders in the video and could not identify the other two juveniles on the bikes.
In an earlier phone interview with The Signal, Jennyfer Stevens, the aunt of the victim, said that she had also been made aware of the video and could identify her nephew as the driver of the first dirt bike.
Kirsten Dishington, Thompson’s grandmother, said in a previous phone interview that she was heartbroken and at a loss for words about the death of her grandson.
“He had freedom riding his dirt bike. It’s something that he enjoyed doing,” she said.
Stevens said that he would be remembered as a kid who “was always being silly and goofy.”
Dishington said that Thompson leaves behind three younger siblings, a 6-year-old and twins who were born on Dec. 15.
She added that he will be very much missed, and he was deeply loved.
According to Jensen, no arrest had been made, and the traffic collision was not being investigated as a criminal inquiry. He said the two other vehicles involved with the collision were found to be not at fault.